Akamai and iStreamPlanet announce they have been selected to work with Microsoft to provide an integrated, end-to-end solution to deliver live and on-demand video online for NBC during the network’s coverage of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games, February 12-28. The solution will leverage Microsoft IIS Smooth Streaming to deliver an uninterrupted, high-quality streaming experience to online audiences via Microsoft Silverlight-based media players.

iStreamPlanet will be providing turnkey satellite downlink encoding and production services to the Smooth Streaming for Silverlight format and the video will be delivered to online audiences over the Akamai HD Network. iStreamPlanet will be encoding 23 video feeds including nine venue feeds, four broadcast feeds, one Olympic News Channel, six Beauty Cams, two Victory Ceremonies and one Press Conference. All 23 feeds are originating from Vancouver, British Columbia and transported to iStreamPlanet’s Las Vegas Webcast Operations Center over OC12 via IP multicast.

The NBC Olympics online Silverlight player will leverage Akamai HD for Microsoft Silverlight and the Akamai HD Network, Akamai’s next generation video delivery offering, to deliver both live and on demand streaming to broadcast-sized audiences with a personalized and interactive online experience and quality designed to match and complements the TV experience. A key feature of Akamai HD for Microsoft Silverlight is adaptive bitrate streaming based on IIS Smooth Streaming, which is architected to enable uninterrupted video playback at HD bitrates that seamlessly adjust to fluctuations in available bandwidth to provide the best quality possible for each user.

iStreamPlanet is collaborating with Akamai on the content ingestion and publishing points management architecture to make sure all created content is delivered in the highest possible quality.

The Akamai HD Network offers adaptive bitrate streaming capabilities across playback formats that are specifically optimized to work with Akamai's HD EdgePlatform for the fastest and most consistent video bitrate switching – designed to enable an instant and uninterrupted viewing experience for consumers even at the highest bitrates. Leveraging Akamai's entire HTTP footprint, video over Akamai's HD Network is delivered from servers closer to audiences around the world. As a result, Akamai can more tightly control the amount of time the player needs to buffer before switching streams. The shorter the buffer, the faster the stream can adapt and respond to changing end-user conditions.

To streamline the content acquisition, encoding and live streams provisioning process including failover scenarios, iStreamPlanet has developed a workflow automation service that enables NBC to start and stop acquiring the desired multicast stream, route that stream to the available encoder, provision all publishing points required to run the live event, pass created encoding profile information including server ingest information to the designated encoder, start encoding and notify NBC’s scheduling system when the encoding process has started and stopped as well as return live event start times so play-by-play data can be synched with the video and audio.